Classical

Krystian Zimerman & Friends
Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos. 2 & 3
DG 4864650 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution)

Zimerman albums tend to be landmark events; he’s typically passed over the G-minor Quartet in favour of its neglected companions. Taped live in Lugano, with Zimerman acting as fastidiously exacting producer, the recordings capture some obtrusive sniffing by the violinist Maria Nowak (I think) but also consistently intense and inspirational chamber-music making. By their side, even the admirable Nash Ensemble sounds prosaic in the Poco Adagio of No.2. It’s partly a more flowing tempo, more subtle string shading, a better-tuned piano. Above all that, it’s a sensitivity to each phrase and gesture, arising from mutual trust and mastery of the score, at a level almost never accessible to orchestras and conductors. PQ

Sound Quality: 95%

Tamara Stefanovich
Organised Delirium – Sonatas by Bartók, Boulez, Eisler, Scarlatti & Shostakovich
Pentatone PTC5187358 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit res)

Who’s afraid of Boulez? Stefanovich’s approach to the Second Sonata is so much less percussive than the classic Pollini/DG, so much more rhapsodic, playful and (dare one say) musical, that you’ll hardly credit it’s the same piece. The full-bodied piano sound helps. She is no less persuasive in the couplings. The Op.1 Sonata by Eisler rivals Berg and prefigures Boulez in its mercurial embrace of Schoenberg, Scriabin and more. In Stefanovich’s hands, the Bartók Sonata swings like Hungarian jazz, the Shostakovich is charged with as much precocious brilliance as Eisler. A luminous Scarlatti Sonata makes a sublime encore. PQ

Sound Quality: 90%

Devieilhe, Dubois, Les Siècles/Roth
Stravinsky: Le Rossignol
Warner Classics 5054197624070 (downloads to 48kHz/24-bit res)

Stravinsky began his first opera in 1908, then set it aside to write ballets for Diaghilev. By the time he picked it back up in 1914, he was a different composer. The brevity and stylistic hotchpotch of the finished work have made it hard to love – until now? Compared to previous versions led by Boulez et al, textures are more sharply chiselled, colours more primary. The libretto (French rather than the original Russian) is more than a clothes-line for notes. Roth is sensitive to the score’s Ravellian magic as well as moments of Rite-like savagery. Devieilhe and Dubois lead an exemplary cast, captured live with plenty of theatre but a minimum of noises off. PQ

Sound Quality: 85%

Matthias Goerne, OPRF/Franck
Shostakovich: Suite On Verses Of Michelangelo
Alpha ALPHA1121 (downloads to 48kHz/24-bit resolution)

The bleak austerity of Shostakovich’s final large-scale work may dissuade interpreters and listeners, but the composer’s black wit and Schubertian alertness to text gleams through the murk. Michelangelo’s meditations on mortality hang in the air and hold up a mirror to our frailty like late Beethoven. Goerne has recorded the piano version for DG but this is the real thing. Both voice and acoustic are suitably cavernous, Goerne’s Russian sounds the part, and Franck coaxes a silky response from his Radio France orchestra. The late symphonic poem coupling October is no less rare, or welcome, albeit patronised in the sleeve-note as subversive agitprop. PQ

Sound Quality: 85%